Rooibos cosmetics

After a wide range of beauty collaborations under her belt from her 12 years as a beauty influencer, Desi Perkins finally took the plunge and became a beauty founder herself a year ago.  Launched in April 2021, her skin-care brand, Dezi Skin, now has four products, with names such as “Claro Que C” and ingredients inspired by her Mexican heritage.  With over 3 million YouTube subscribers and 4.3 million Instagram followers, Perkins is focused on Instagram for her brand’s marketing but is eyeing TikTok, too.  “[Instagram] is targeting its platform toward brands and a shopping experience. For brands, this is still a really, really great platform. But I would also like to dip into TikTok with the brand, in a more casual sense. That's definitely in our forecast,” she said on the latest Glossy Beauty Podcast.  Check out the entire podcast episode to learn about Perkins' development process for her brand and the way she uses audience feedback to develop products. She also shares her views on the beauty social media landscape and how it’s changed over the past decade.

Hair care has been a passion for Annie Young-Scrivner, CEO of Wella Company, since she was 13 years old when she started a side business cutting and perming hair. So when the executive was recruited from Godiva where she served as CEO for three years to join the 140-year-old hair-care and nail company, she jumped at the opportunity. Private equity firm KKR named Young-Scrivner as the CEO of Wella Company in Oct. 2020 following the announcement of its acquisition of 60% of the company from Coty. Wella distributes hair-care brands such as Wella Professionals, Clairol, Nioxin, GHD and nail polish brand OPI. In Dec. 2021, the company celebrated its first anniversary as an independent company. KKR and Wella Company have noted the ambitions to IPO in approximately four years. “We have a tremendous opportunity to be an incredible company. The first thing we're focused on is making sure we have the right [products] to meet the needs of the consumer,” said Young-Scrivner on the Glossy Beauty podcast. “The second thing is making sure we're growing in the right way. There's going to be lots of [exit] options for us.” When it comes to building a product and brand portfolio that stands the test of time, Wella is focusing on storytelling across all of its brands. This includes Wella Professional. Its Shinefinity long-lasting color glaze speaks to the health of hair, with the tagline “Shine you can feel." Wella has over 1,000 patented products and technologies it can use to position itself as a superior beauty company offering innovative products, Young-Scrivner said. OPI has also looked to unique opportunities to capture new customers and communities by partnering with Xbox in January. So far these efforts are paying off, as Wella’s professional sales channel has experienced a double-digit sales growth compared to the fiscal year 2019, and both its e-commerce and retail channels are growing substantially, said Young-Scrivner.

Starting out on Etsy and made by hand in the kitchen of co-founders Alex Kummerow and Julia Wills, skin-care brand Herbivore is now a rainbow-colored powerhouse with $15 million in Series A funding and distribution at Sephora. The brand’s Instagram-friendly aesthetic, emphasis on plant-based ingredients and glass-heavy packaging have attracted a loyal following. It has recently been rolling out a range of new products focused on active ingredients, including its latest vitamin C launch, as well as its bakuchiol Moon Fruit Serum, which launched this week. For this Glossy Beauty Podcast, Kummerow joined us from his home base in Hawaii to talk about Herbivore's founding story, growth and next steps. He shared details on how Herbivore went from a homemade brand to being stocked in top national retailers, how it's approached sustainability, and where he predicts beauty is headed.

After 26-years in business, Greek beauty brand Korres has a rich history to tell. Korres began as a homeopathic herbal remedy brand within a Greek pharmacy that was founded by George Korres in 1992. In 1996, the beauty brand was born, and it has since built up a portfolio of skin care, body care and fragrance products. They include staple Greek ingredients like olive oil, Greek yogurt, white pine and Assyrtiko, a white grape variety from the Greek island of Santorini. After first selling through Henri Bendel department store in 2000, Korres relaunched in the U.S. market in 2018 with a digital-first approach. This shortly followed Morgan Stanley’s investment of over $56 million into Korres in Nov. 2017, allowing the brand to push further into international markets. More recently, in Jan. 2021, the 26-year-old brand entered Ulta Beauty stores through the retailer’s Conscious Beauty program, following its Ulta.com launch in Dec. 2020. Korres is also sold at Sephora, HSN and Dermstore, With Ulta Beauty, the Korres team hopes to reach Gen-Z customers, which is a big focus for the beauty brand. Additionally, Korres plans to set up livestream shopping on its DTC e-commerce site in April. The goal is to better control its brand story and introduce people to its history as a Greek apothecary-pharmacy brand, while focusing on ingredient harvesting within Greece, in-house formulations and productions. “My vision is not to sit here and tell a story. My vision is to bring people in,” said Lena Korres, Korres co-founder and gm of North America, on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty podcast. “That’s why livestream shopping and being able to show things and introduce people [to Korres] and [let them] ask questions [is important]. That’s where I see our brand heading toward and making a difference.” In 2020, Korres earned $30 million in U.S. sales and $97 million globally. Korres expected to earn $120 million in 2021 global sales, she said, in a Glossy Jan. 2021 story.

After meeting while working at Glossier, Rebecca Zhou and Annie Kreighbaum went their own ways in the DTC world. But in 2019, they decided to get back into beauty. Nearly a year ago, they launched their body-care startup, Soft Services, which offers products addressing skin issues such as body acne and keratosis pilaris in chic packages you’d want to display on your counter instead of hiding it in your medicine cabinet. Investors have taken notice: The brand has already raised $3 million in seed funding.  The idea was inspired by Kreighbaum’s beauty editorial years at Into the Gloss, where she learned that articles about common skin issues were incredibly popular, yet products offering solutions to them were hard to come by. Rather than joining the bandwagon of Gen Z-focused brands, Soft Services calls its approach “elastic branding,” when it comes to its target demographics -- and it’s not leaving out millennials.  On the most recent episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast, Zhou and Kreighbaum discuss the need to remember millennial consumers, their approach to fundraising and the reason they don’t take a “purist” approach to DTC.

When Milk Makeup launched in February 2016, it brought a refreshing yet irreverent take on the beauty world and promoted that being bold and different was to be celebrated. Born out of the NYC-based Milk Studios, Milk Makeup made a name for itself through daring and playful products like Kush Mascara and creating blotting papers that doubled as rolling papers for marijuana joints. Today, Milk Makeup is sold in 20 countries and is a Sephora U.S.-exclusive brand. It was acquired by a special-purpose acquisition vehicle from Waldencast in Nov. 2021 alongside Obagi skin care in a three-way transaction for $1.2 billion. “Milk Makeup started with the objective of broadening and challenging the definition of beauty. The founders talk about it not as a business but as a movement rooted in the core values of inclusion, diversity, creativity, self-expression,” Tim Coolican, CEO of Milk Makeup, said on this week’s Glossy beauty podcast. Milk Makeup was founded by Milk Studios co-founder Mazdack Rassi, fashion editor and entertainment reporter Zanna Roberts Rassi, creative director Georgie Greville and product developer Dianna Ruth. As the Milk Makeup team looks toward the future of its business post-acquisition, they are focusing business efforts towards merch and product collaborations, international expansion and what it means to be a “cool” brand.

There’s no doubt that beauty brands are lining up for the chance to sign Scarlett Johansson as a brand ambassador. But now, the award-winning actress is all about The Outset, her new skin-care brand. “For a long time, I was a brand ambassador for different luxury beauty brands and beauty brands. And right around I'd say my late 20s, I was just done representing someone else's beauty, ideal or beauty standard, and felt like I was confident enough to do something that really was true to me,” she said on this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. Five years in the making, The Outset was unveiled March 1 with six products. Johansson teamed up with fashion and beauty executive Kate Foster Lengyel to found the brand, which is available via DTC sales now and will launch with Sephora on April 26. Lengyel oversees the day-to-day business operations of the brand, “and then I look after Kate,” said Johansson. The marketing strategy is focused on Instagram and TikTok, but through the brand’s accounts, specifically — Johansson famously steers clear of having a personal Instagram account. “My ego is far too fragile for me to have my own social media,” she said. While she said “never say never,” when it comes to starting her own account, she added, “I cannot imagine it happening anytime soon.” On the podcast, the business partners went into more detail on the brand’s founding, including how it was inspired by Johansson's straightforward approach to skin care, as well as consumer research.

For Julian Addo, founder and CEO of textured hair-care brand Adwoa Beauty, her business is deeply intertwined with her own life story. Addo was born in Monrovia, Liberia to a Ghanaian father and Liberian mother and moved to the U.S. in 1982. She worked in a beauty salon as a stylist and then as a salon owner. After a period in banking, while still doubling as a salon owner, Addo began to see how the DTC space was disrupting not only business models, but also branding itself. Inspired by the likes of Glossier and Warby Parker, Addo saw a stark lack of such branding innovation in the natural and textured hair sector. She said she woke up one day in March 2016 determined to develop Adwoa Beauty, which shares Addo’s traditional Ghanian name meaning “female born on a Monday.” “I knew that I had to pull from my life and my experiences and my vision super heavily so that I could enjoy the brand, because it came from a passionate place,” Addo shared on this week’s episode of the Glossy Beauty Podcast. Adwoa Beauty has been a Sephora-exclusive brand since Nov. 2019 and has 11 products. It plans to expand to an additional 158 doors in the first half of 2022, to a total of 448 U.S. Sephora doors. Adwoa Beauty is also in 48 Sephora Canada doors and will expand to all 98 locations. Approximately 65% of Adwoa Beauty sales are from Sephora, and Adwoa grew its Sephora sales 200% year-over-year between 2021 and 2020. “For me, it’s about being smart on where we go and how we move. We want to grow but not grow too fast, because there are a lot of pain points that come with just spreading yourself too thin,” said Addo. “I never really saw Adwoa Beauty as a type of brand that was in 100,000 doors. I want this brand to provide its audience with an experience they hadn’t had before.”

With over 20 years of experience in her dermatology practice, Dr. Rose Ingleton is known as the “dermatologist to the stars.” Reported to be the dermatologist of Iman, Chrissy Teigan and Adriana Lima, Ingleton took the leap and branched out with her own skin-care brand in 2019. Now stocked at eight retailers including Sephora and Net-a-Porter, Rose Ingleton MD Skincare was developed to address the most common skin issues that Ingleton sees among her patients. Dr. Ingleton, who still practices dermatology, sat down with the Glossy Beauty Podcast from her Manhattan practice to discuss all things skin care. While she won’t confirm which celebrities see her — “Unless you see them coming in and out of my office, you’ll never know who comes here,” she said — she shared details on her approach to skin care, the growth of her brand and her belief that luxury skin care is shifting toward experts.

When Mina Chae, CEO of Farmacy, first joined the farm-to-face skin-care brand five years ago as director of marketing and consumer engagement, the team was small -- so much so that she had to help box up influencer mailers and even drive to the warehouse to pack shipments during Black Friday shopping. Farmacy was founded in 2016 and was acquired by P&G for an undisclosed sum at the end of 2021. The acquisition coincided with the appointment of Chae as CEO of Farmacy. Chae stepped into the CEO role in January after previously holding the role of vp of marketing and consumer engagement. Now as CEO, her plans are to increase brand awareness, including through more advertising and marketing with out-of-home advertising and the Farmacy’s first-ever pop-up in April. “When I first started, I was responding to all of the DMs in the [Instagram] comments myself. I would stay up all night reading all of the reviews, and I still stay up all night reading all of the reviews,” Chae said on the latest episode of the Glossy Beauty podcast. “That puts me in a unique perspective, because I am connected to the consumer. My goal as CEO is to continue that [relationship].” Chae spoke to Glossy further about her transition to the CEO role, her plans to boost brand awareness and the brand's focus on sustainability moving forward.